A Solo Allagash River Trip In July

[ReluctantFarmer]

For life reasons that nobody cares about, I’ve been trying hard to get back into canoe camping this summer after a winter that wasn’t very fun. The capstone of my plan has been a solo trip down the river half of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway. I got 5 days off and planned to spend 4 nights taking a slow route down the river.

There’s a million accounts of running this river and this account will not add much, but since I’m prone to word-vomit, let’s write it anyways. I think it’ll have to be in two posts. I’ve attached a number of pictures, but in retrospect I was too busy to take very many good ones: if the water was moving I didn’t have a free hand to open the camera case and aim.



Since I’m goal oriented, here’s the goals for this trip:

1. Find some solitude. This is why people do solo trips, right?
2. See a moose. I've been here twice before and not seen any moose.
3. See a loon and tell people about how much I like loons. Loons!
4. Use my own composite solo boat and don’t ruin it.
5. Don’t camp at any of the campsites I’d stayed at before and hated, like Lost Popple or Housa B.



Going into this trip, I was concerned about two things: the water levels and the level of crowds.

The Allagash Wilderness Waterway is extremely accessible; a dozen different outfitters will shuttle you to the entry points and the camp sites are luxurious by backcountry standards. The only barrier to entry is really a slightly long drive from major cities… but honestly not that long. That’s great for making the winderness accessible, but with no real barrier to entry I’m worried it’ll be quite busy in July. I’ve run the Allagash twice before, when I was considerably younger, in August. In that timeframe there were very few people on the river; we really never had to race for a campsite and the only people making noise were us. I was a bit concerned that in the middle of July, this would not be the case.

You can read across the internet that the Allagash flow rate should be greater than 300, 500, 700, or 1200 cf/s, depending on the source. Consensus seems to be that 1200 is perfect, 700 is alright, 500 is dragging territory and 300 is impossible. Going into this the water level was 700 and dropping.

I really wanted to run my own boat, a Northstar Northwind Solo in IXP. It’s agile, fast, comfortable, and reasonably light. It should be able to take a hit… although I’ve never tested that. But that means I’m nervous about dragging. We’ll see how that goes with 700-and-dropping.

In any case, I drove up from the Boston area on Sunday. I’d scheduled a transport on Monday morning with Tyler Kelly Camps, largely because I liked where their takeout was at the confluence with the St. Johns. There might be cheaper arrangements available for a solo but I didn’t really care and was determined to keep my small car and thin tires off the logging roads. The drive north was unremarkable. I had dinner in Ft. Kent (at a surprisingly nice restaurant that was for-sure not there 10 years ago).

Just looking at the St. John’s river it was obvious the water levels were lower than I’d seen before.

I camped at Kelly’s place on Sunday night. Pro-tip for anyone considering that: the one working street light in Allagash is right in front of that place.

Other than that, things went smoothly and met the driver (Hilton) in the morning. Had a really fun chat as we drove south on the logging roads. I mentioned that I’d been up here twice before and in the past trips, never seen a moose. Then:



Is that bigfoot? Yeah, the picture sucks because we were driving fast and it’s a phone camera but that’s a moose.



2. See a moose. Done!

I put in a Bissonette bridge. I’d run Chase Rapids twice before in a tandem, but this time wasn’t excited to do that. In retrospect I think this was too cautious; the boat took hits just fine. But I didn’t know that yet.



Then it was off into the river. Bissonette is below almost all the rapids, but there’s a few just-short-of-rips left to do. On the downside, the Solo doesn’t turn very quickly; you basically need to do a bow jam to spin enough to eddy-out, and the boat likes to flip when you bow jam. On the upside, it’s beyond easy to drawstoke or scull sideways, so I mostly do that. It was easy to see the line in these not-even-rips and this all went very very smoothly.



A great way to start the trip (but I should have done Chase).


Then its into the meadows. I start to get into the rhythm of paddling and take a bunch of pictures. There are literal scores of ducks, dragonflies on my boat, a fish jumps out of the water next to me. Apparently this is a thing for some sort of river fish. I'm not a fish expert. It was wild. The kept happening here; you could catch them with a net if you had the reactions of a ninja. This area was super peaceful.

But… this is where my personality problems begin to surface. I’ve planned to spend time exploring the side-channels, looking at wildlife, finding peace and solitude. But I’ve got a double-bladed paddle in my hands, and I’m here to paddle and so… I put the paddle in the water. I’m through onto the lakes before I even know what I’ve done. The Solo boat is fast and there’s nobody here to tell me to slow down.

I’d planned to spend hours trying to find back channels in the long grass here. The timestamps on my pictures say that 45 minutes after starting I’m coming around the corner into Umsaskis.

There's wind, but the wind means nothing to this low, well-trimmed boat.

Then Umsaskis flies by. I recall seeing that several camp sites were already taken; a west wind of maybe 15 MPH picks up and gusts are higher. Not quite whitecaps but the wind is clearly blowing other groups to river right. I pass a couple who looks like they’re pulling into Ledges, a group that’s windbound on river left, another large group that’s just not going as fast as I am. I just keep paddling; this is the environment this canoe is made for; with a good trim and a double bladed paddle the wind is basically no factor.

I come to Long Lake; my plan is to find a campsite here and enjoy an early day with my book, and enjoy a night with loons on the lakes. I’m getting hungry and tired, and make myself slow down. I’m rewarded with a loon call:



Not a great picture, but there's loons on Umsaskis and Long Lake. I really love loons. This is not a unique thought; I think lots of outdoorsmen like loons but really, loons are great. Have we covered that? I think we’ve covered that.

3. See a loon and tell people about how much I like loons. Done!

We're really powered through these goals.


But then things turn a little bit sour. After a snack stop, I start noticing that, including the group pulling into Ledges, every camp site I’ve seen for a bit has been taken.

Sandy Point is taken. Pines is taken.
Ok, fine, I’ll get the next one… but Grey Brook is taken.
A little bit of easy paddling to cross the open water and… Jalbet is taken.
Some harder paddling back against the headwind to Sam’s which is… taken.

I'd like to stop on Long Lake, not because I'm any good at slowing down, but because I want to see and hear more loons. But... the sites are all taken.

Across Long Lake, the river turns back into a river and it’s meadows and marshes again for a bit. I manage to slow down a bit, bury my frustration, and am rewarded:



2. See a moose. Done! Again!



This is a phone camera again and not well-posed, but that's a moose, and it’s close. It's right next to the waterway and totally ignores me. This was super cool and would be a highlight of the trip.

But otherwise, it’s afternoon now; I’m getting hungry for some real food, I’m getting tired. I’m getting a little bit grumpy at racing people for camp sites and that my plan to spend the night on the lakes isn’t going to happen.



It starts raining. I decide I’ll stop at the next available site, which is the set of sites across Harvey Pond.

If you know the AWW map and how dramatic irony works you already know what the next available site was.





That blurry picture says "Lost Popple".

I hate this site. It’s small, it’s extremely buggy, it gets muddy. I think people like it becaues of the availability of firewood and the well water from a historical well back in the woods. But I hate it.

But I’m tired, so I setup my tent and make an early dinner. I’m annoyed at how crowded the lakes were.

Apparently I’m not the only one. Two or three groups pass me as I’m making dinner and seem quite annoyed I’ve gotten to Lost Popple first, in the rain. Some teenager with poor impulse control even yells at me about it like I’m in downtown Boston.

Let’s call this goal failed.

5. Don’t camp at any of the campsites I’d stayed at before and hated, like Lost Popple or Housa B. Fail.


On the other hand, the view is nice enough, and the giant sleeping mat I’ve packed means I sleep well.





Overall, I scrapped one rock in the rips and two shallow spots in the meadows somewhere and the bottom of my IXP boat only has the three new scratch. Feeling pretty good about that “don’t ruin it” goal. 633 cf/s is the reading at Allagash for this day. We’ll come back to that.



The big advantage of solo trips is I can do a truly lazy breakfast while breaking camp and loading the boat and making coffee (real coffee, with a grinder and an aeropress) all in less than an hour, or half that if I’m not being lazy. I get on the water during the rain around 6am.

It’s raining. It’s early. I’m running a wood paddle to not make too much noise, because every site a pass has sleeping groups on it.


I burned a map of the Allagash into this paddle. I’ve been looking forward to this trip for a long time. So far, maybe a mixed bag?

The morning, though, with the warm weather and all the other groups sleeping through a light rain is really lovely. I packed a substantial rain jacket and I just leave it in the bag and paddle. I think I’m rewarded with some ducks and some scenery.



I decide I’m not going to wake people at Long Lake Dam and either run it or line. I scout it on the left and frankly I do not see any sharp nails or broken lumber on river left, but I’m solo and composite boat, so I line it. This goes fine, although I don’t win any awards for gracefulness doing it.




Only after I’m done do I notice at least a couple of people at the site were watching. If I’d known I’d had an audience I just would have run it. Really, almost all of river left looked safe enough.


I don’t have that much to say about the first half of the paddle between Long Lake Dam and Round Pond. It was very nice. There was wildlife. There were some ripples, some winding lazy river sections, a lot of quiet. I just really enjoyed this section and was too busy paddling to take pictures. Except this one:


I feel bad because I want to write more words about how lovely this part was but I don’t really know what to write here. My advice: this section is best done in the morning with no people around and in the rain, because it was magical.



Maybe about 3/4s to Round Pond, I started to have a very small problem. There are “rapids” marked on the map here, but they’re not really rapids for the most part. What they are is rips leading into shallows.

What you have to do here, basically, is find the downstream V that tells you the line though the rips (which is fun enough) and then guess which side of the river is actually going to have water in it. I don’t know it, but we have about 600 cf/s of flow at the USGS sensor today.

The problem is: you can’t really see which side it is until you’re on it. I can’t stand very well in the Northwind Solo, and when the wind picks up you can’t really see the riffles that might give you a hint. I guess wrong a few times and at least once have to hop out of the boat and drag a few feet to deeper water. No big deal, but this happens a bunch of times. Maybe 5-6 new scratches. Fine. A small price to pay for some brief and fun but not challenging “white” water.

I pull into Round Pond.


There's the tree. I wasn't not going to get a picture of the tree.

A little bit into Round Pond, I run into the Ranger, and my plan for the day changes. The forecast, he tells me, is for a thunderstorm and possibly a very severe one. We chatted for a while and I think this is the forcast he was looking at, at the time:

The National Weather Service in Gray Maine has issued a * Severe Thunderstorm Warning for... Northwestern Somerset County in west central Maine... * Until 145 PM EDT. *
At 1250 PM EDT, a severe thunderstorm was located 29 miles north of Jackman, moving southeast at 60 mph.
HAZARD...70 mph wind gusts and nickel size hail.
SOURCE...Radar indicated. '
IMPACT...Expect considerable tree damage. Damage is likely to mobile homes, roofs, and outbuildings.

I'm fairly experienced, if rusty, but 70 MPH winds and 1cm hail sounds pretty bad.

I decide that I want to get to a campsite and get under cover early. With a 6am start time, I’ve done hours of paddling already and I decide my plan is that starting at noon, where-ever I am, I will take the first available campsite.

But before I get one, there are more “rapids”, which are really rips into shallows. I make another wrong call and scrape on the side of the river. And again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
And again.

It starts to rain again.

If you know how dramatic irony works you already know what camp site I come to.





I really want to skip it, but I think the thunderstorm is coming. I havn’t heard thunder, but the winds are 20+ MPH at this point. It’s not dangerous; I’m on the river section again, but rain+ high winds is ominous. So, I don’t skip it.

5. Don’t camp at any of the campsites I’d stayed at before and hated, like Lost Popple or Hosea B. Fail. Again.




Part 2 Below, because my word vomit is over the character limit.

 

[ReluctantFarmer]

The problem with Hosea B, other than my inability to reliably spell the name, is really that there’s no flat spot except right by the picnic table. If you hammocking and solo, it might be fine, but my hammock is in my car back at Allagash.

So I take the spot literally right by the picnic table, and start driving stakes. I stake down my tent, and every single point that could possibly get a stake on the rain fly. I guy out my fly and stake those lines, too. I throw an extra stake in each the corners. 70 MPH winds are coming; I’d put a stake through my tent floor if I could. I throw up the tarp, too, lashing its ridgeline to both sides of the table and throwing 3 lines on each side. Setup takes maybe a whole hour, raining the whole time.



I flip my canoe and tie it down. Remember those shallows? There are a LOT more scapes on it. A lot. 20? 30?






It looks pretty bad. But honestly, none of them are fuzzy; none of them are to the Kevlar (or, Innegra or whatever), so it’s cosmetic. It’s fine. Mostly fine.

In any case, there's no time to worry about it, because there's a massive thunderstorm coming. I quickly make dinner and pack away all my stuff as best I can.
In an hour or two.... it stops raining. No thunder. No hail. No more rain.

I never get a thunderstorm.



But honestly I turn out to love this site; its pretty open and elevated so the winds blows all the bugs away. I make myself dessert and eat it by the water. I go swimming. I read my book against the river.



Despite literally planning to stay anywhere but here, I think I highly, highly recommend this site to hammocks and solos. It even has a spring that makes filling the filter easy.

And looking upriver I see another moose in the distance.





2. See a moose! Done! Three times!

But everyone with more than one small tent will hate the site.


And here’s the best part: because everyone else on the river thinks there’s going to be 70 MPH winds, too, I see one group all day, towards the evening. They seem scared of the forecast, too, and in a hurry, and we yell well-wishes to each other. I never saw anyone else, on the river or passing.



Up the next morning and it’s pretty. It takes forever to break down the camp (I must have driven a hundred stakes) but eventually I resume paddling.



It’s a good morning. Generally just peaceful dead water paddling. Every campsite I pass is empty now (except one); I think I’ve passed almost everyone on day 2 with my early morning and the thunderstorm scare.



In the distance, a moose with a baby crosses the river. It's so far it might even been a deer, but I'm counting it. You be the judge.



2. See a moose! Done! Four times! (plus a baby moose if it's not a deer family)



The water level today is right around 600 cf/s and as I get deep into the dead water area, it’s scrape city.



The sequence goes like this:

The water is deep, I paddle happily and look for wildlife.
There’s a small rip, and I choose a safe line.
After I’m done, I find myself against either river left or right, and uh on, there’s a sandbar (really a rock bar) and it’s too shallow to get back to the opposite bank where it’s deeper now.
I scrape the bottom of the canoe, curse, and eventually slide to a stop.
I hop out and float the canoe 5-10 feet to one side or the other.
I hop back in and paddle again as it gets deeper.

Repeat.


And repeat.



And repeat.



It’s not difficult, per se. I’m used to wet-footing and I’m wearing good astral whitewater shoes, so I can just jump out when I need to. But it’s annoying. I grow to dread the “zing!” Noise of the composite boat against the rocks that means we’re starting the sequence over again. And once or twice I’m actually dragging the canoe instead of floating it. Not far. No more than 10 feet. But… “zing!” goes the bottom of the boat.



I didn’t take too many pictures of being incredibly annoyed, but here’s an example of needing to drag about 10 feet:




Repeat.

And Repeat.



Don’t get me wrong; this is all a nice section of the river in general. There are some minor rips and swiftwater and it’s nice. But… then you’re shallow again. For anyone considering a composite canoe on this river, this is where you pay the price.

In any case, it doesn’t take long before I find myself at Michaud Farm, a whole day before I’d intended to get there. The inability to stop paddling and just look around a little bit has screwed up my schedule. But I still am there to paddle, soooooooo…



Pulling into Michaud Farm is super fun and I’m amazed it isn’t talked about more. There used to be some sort of logging boom here so the current and river is all screwed up. You have to start in the middle of the river, avoid some rocks by going river-right, then cut hard river-left and actually go upstream as the current drags you backwards and to the left. It’s about 1 minute of fun but it’s really fun. Recommended.

I did not get a picture because I was paddling it. Goal for next time.


I chatted with the ranger here, who had not seen a composite canoe on the river before. I thought of the scrape-drag-scrape cycle I’d been doing all day and, well, that’s why. The ranger thought that below the falls would be better than round pond rips and such. So I decided to continue.



I still hadn’t seen any other people (other than the ranger) all day. I continued to the falls. The section between Michaud Farms and the Falls was mostly deeper and this was fairly pleasant. I made myself keep the double bladed paddle in the boat so I at least wouldn’t go too fast.



As you approach the falls, I think it’s well known that there are two portage entrances: the official one and the unofficial one. I definitely, definitely pulled into the official portage.





If you don’t stop at the official portage, you run about 300 feet of pretty excellent rips and rock-garden, with the threat that if you don’t do it right, you’ll go over the falls. The rips are short but fairly fun to navigate with an empty boat and the sense that you might die if you screw up. I definitely did not and would not do it solo after putting my gear on the bank of the official portage entrance.



The unofficial portage entrance looks like this, with a tight trail on the right.



I did the carry maybe 4 times for all my stuff and it’s short and a nice trail. Oddly, someone had left their shoes at the end of the carry, so if that’s you, it was still there as of July 15 2026. I took a picture but I think that sort of picture is "for subscribers only" these days.




I took all the required pictures of Allgash Falls.
It was clear, just looking at the map, that despite planning for 4 nights there just wasn’t that much river left if I wasn’t willing to slow down. I made myself stop at Big Brook East.



As it happens, the official map of the Allagash is wrong here: on the map the Big Brook South campsite is first on river-left, then Big Brook East on river right, then Big Brook North on the left. That is not actually the case. As I passed the second Big Brook campsite on river-left, I’d seen no campsite on the right yet. I turned around and paddled upstream, all the way back to Big Brook South. No river-right campsite.



It turns out that Big Brook South is actually 500 feet or so beyond both river-left sites. It’s nice. Someone, I’m thinking the Ranger, had left flowers on the table. It’s elevated and gets a nice breeze. It has a cool spring.







This site is really almost perfect. The only downside, I think, is that it’s fairly close the Big Brook North, so if there’s a group at North, you can practically hear their intimate conversations because of the cross-river acoustics. Oh well.



Day 4 brought with it a view of the bottom of my boat. Yeesh.



But… none of that is fuzzy. So I’m calling it, uh, OK.


4. Use my own composite solo boat and don’t ruin it. Eh, uh, it's fine. We're not winning any awards but we're good.

Your judgment might be different here; it’s not sleak and perfect anymore, and I know there are people for which this will look like a horror show. For me, though, it’s meant to be used, and I’m happy enough to use it. Until it’s fuzzy.


There is a little bit more river the next morning. Back in the boat for a windy last section. And, again, it’s the scrape cycle, because the flow rate is 599 cf/s.



It’s pretty annoying… but the parts I can paddle are still fairly perfect. It looks like a storybook, and the miles fly by.



I see a moose cross the river in the distance and this time I just watch, not pulling out the camera. No picture but I'm counting it.

2. See a moose! Done! Five times! (plus a baby moose if it's not a deer family)


Twin Brook Rapids are real rapids and it has a real drop in it that you basically have to run straight over. Short, but for sure real rapids. I got a little water in the boat doing it and really enjoyed it. Maybe that’s my unique contribution in this writeup: Twin Brook Rapids are fun and a good reason to go beyond Michard Farm. Go run them. I don’t think I’ve seen that in previous internet writeups, so there you go. No picture because real rapids means the camera stays in the case.



Of course, the water in the boat I took in the rapids then made me heavier. So I scrapped more. Restart the scrape cycle.



By the time I got the takeout I think I was ready to be done, even though I was a full day ahead of schedule. Lunch at Two Rivers and back on the road south.



So, to summarize:



1. Find some solitude. Let's say no. I had to play "it's a race" to get away from people.
2. See a moose! Done! Five times!
3. See a loon and tell people about how much I like loons.
4. Use my own composite solo boat and don’t ruin it. Eh, you be the judge. I'm going to say
5. Don’t camp at any of the campsites I’d stayed at before and hated, like Lost Popple or Housa B. but also

The Allagash Wilderness Waterway is, I think, busier than would be ideal in mid July. I think it’s great that people are getting out and enjoying canoe-camping a wild river; I want to be clear about that. It’s wonderful that Maine has a trip this good that I could get to fairly easily and has good enough logistics to take a family or a young child or a Boy Scout group. But only by playing “race everyone” and “musical campsites” was I able to get ahead of people enough to get some solitude. I did manage maybe 1.5 days with no people, but that pissed off the people who I “beat” to the campsites.

On the flip side, I think 600 cf/s is enough to do the paddle, barely. It has annoying dragging at that level, but it’s annoying, not difficult. I’m sure 1200 would be a lot, a lot, less annoying.

I think at 500 cf/s it might start to be actually difficult. At that level, my personal preference would be to find something else to do.

Likewise, I think it’s fine to run a composite layup here as long as you can read rapids and don’t mind the brutal scratching. I actually only had maybe one or two impacts the whole time, so even a real lightweight kevlar (rather than IXP) boat would have been OK. It’s all scratched up, but zero of those scratches are into the fabric. I’ll likely not bother to refinish the boat until I can touch at least one section of fuzz. Maybe another season, maybe two.

I saw a lot of moose. And some loons. That makes me happy. I want to write some big conclusion after almost 4000 words but I don’t think I have one.

Maybe: next time I’ll run it solo in drysuit season, which should be much quieter.



I do think I’ll be back a fourth time.

 

[Boatman53]

Thanks for that report. You hit a lot of your goals.
Jim

 

[Jatfomike]

Nice report! Thanks! I was on the river a couple weeks ahead of you in my Northstar Phoenix in IXP layup…..we launched below Churchill dam and took out in Allagash Village. It was my first trip there, 5 days, 4 of the days the temps were in the mid 90’sF…..needless to say we spent a lot of time swimming….
Mike

 

[ppine]

Nice trip reports. No wonder it is famous.
One of the few rivers in the East I regret never paddling.

 

[Gamma1214]

it’s not sleak and perfect anymore, and I know there are people for which this will look like a horror show. For me, though, it’s meant to be used, and I’m happy enough to use it. Until it’s fuzzy.

Personally, I like seeing a canoe being used the way that it was intended to be used. (As long as it doesn't get fuzzy... only cows should be fuzzy)

I really enjoyed the TR and the pics. Thanks for taking the time to post.

 

[ReluctantFarmer]

Nice report! Thanks! I was on the river a couple weeks ahead of you in my Northstar Phoenix in IXP layup…..we launched below Churchill dam and took out in Allagash Village. It was my first trip there, 5 days, 4 of the days the temps were in the mid 90’sF…..needless to say we spent a lot of time swimming….
Mike

That's pretty cool (or hot!); I think having more water was key and I imagine you scrapped less?

 

[Tryin']

Great write up and pictures!